


Art Is What You Can Get Away With

by sinuous_curve



Category: Fall Out Boy, Panic At The Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-09
Updated: 2009-12-09
Packaged: 2017-10-04 07:26:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So," Patrick says at the weekly staff meeting of the Schiff Gallery staff. "I have news."</p><p>He puts enough emphasis on the words to have the gallery employees looking up and actually paying attention. As far as Joe knows, the biggest showing they have planned in the near future is with a local glass sculptor. Great, but not likely to cause big ripples in the art world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Art Is What You Can Get Away With

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to insunshine for the mix and encouragement, to nova33 for a thorough and helpful beta, danacias for comments and insight, and especially thanks to provetheworst for much needing perspective, insight, and help. ♥
> 
> Written for ficjournal in for the 2009 drawn_to exchange.

"So," Patrick says at the weekly staff meeting of the Schiff Gallery staff. "I have news."

He puts enough emphasis on the words to have the gallery employees looking up and actually paying attention. As far as Joe knows, the biggest showing they have planned in the near future is with a local glass sculptor. Great, but not likely to cause big ripples in the art world.

"Spencer Smith has decided to do his next show in the city," Patrick continues, smile broadening of its own volition. "And he's decided he wants to do it at the Schiff Gallery."

Joe whistles in the back of his throat, low and impressed. Spencer Smith is a hell of a catch for them. He rose up out of art school obscurity at the age of nineteen with photographs that knocked the art world's collective socks off and he hasn't slowed down since. He's a Big Fucking Deal.

"We got really lucky," Patrick says over the low murmur of whispers around the conference table. "He wants to start with a smaller gallery to get his feet wet."

Joe's sitting at his usual place beside Pete halfway down the table. They have an abandoned game of hangman between them, written on the back of an old brochure from the Manet exhibit. Not Joe's favorite; the Impressionists tend to blur in his brain.

"Joe," Patrick says slowly.

"I'm here," Joe says, wriggling his fingers in a little wave. "Yes, boss?"

Patrick adjusts his fedora, folds his arms across his chest and gives Joe a look. It's the same measured expression Joe got back when he interned between his junior and senior years of college, trying to kill a couple summer months before classes started up again. He ended that day with tentative job offer, once he had his degree, and a friend.

"You want to take this one?" Patrick asks.

The table collectively lets out a gasp of surprise. The newbie doesn't usually get the choice shows.

Joe, just a little bit on the really fucking surprised side, casts a glance to Pete, who offers him an under-the-table thumbs up and big, teeth-glaring donkey smile. "Yeah," Joe says, then swallows hard to force his voice back down into the octave it belongs. "Sure."

*

When lunchtime comes, Joe shrugs on his pea coat and heads to the little deli a couple blocks away with Ashlee and Pete in tow. The sky overhead is a bright, burned blue and the wind threads and sighs through the branches of the trees. They're heavily laden with leaves turning to red and yellow and orange.

They group around a table outside, even though it's colder than fuck and Joe's knuckles are turning raw, chapped red. However, they can steal wireless from the cafe next door if they sit outside and that means Joe can do a little covert Spencer Smith research.

"I thought Smith was in Vegas," Pete says through a mouthful of sandwich.

"He is," Ash says, curling her mouth in Pete's direction. "Animal. Or was, rather."

Joe takes a sip of his coffee and types one handed. "According to wikipedia, and we all know that wiki is the end all be all of knowledge, Spencer James Smith the fifth is a Las Vegasian erotic photographer who relocated to the city in late August to, and I quote, 'pursue new creative endeavors'."

"Took him long enough," Pete says loftily.

"Good art can come from other places, you know."

"Lies. All lies."

"It also says," Joe continues, blithely ignoring the pair of them and their weird ass expression of sexual tension. "That Smith is often compared to Robert Mapplethorpe for his unabashedly erotic depictions of alternative sexualities, even in the case of his self-portraits."

Ash unscrews the lid of her iced tea and rolls her eyes. "It's not like he got famous for taking naked myspace bathroom pictures with a cameraphone."

"There's a gallery." Pete elbows Joe over and starts scrolling. "Let's take a looksee."

*

In Joe's highly articulate and well formed opinion, Smith's work looks...like a lot of close ups of poeple's junk in black and white.

*

The Schiff Gallery's current show is conglomeration of works from a dozen up and coming artists who use their various mediums to make a range of political statements. Ash digs the sculpture of twisted bodies representing the effects of AIDS; Pete prefers the industrial stuff railing against the spread of gentrification.

Joe says he can't pick a favorite, which it no surprise to anyone. His mythical mixed-media stuff that never sees the light of day is quasi-legendary.

After splitting off from Pete and Ash, Joe sneaks a detour through the gallery. He pauses at a wall of framed photographs from two different artists; a lady in her mid-fifties who deals in extreme nature and the other a twenty-three year old kid who illegally tromps trough condemned buildings and pairs those shots up in diptychs with faces.

It's kind of cool, really, how a blade of grass can look like a skyscraper and broken windows echo a ten year old's missing teeth.

*

At six, Patrick knocks on Joe's open door and leans against the frame.

Doors closed to the public an hour before and by now, just about everyone has already hit the highway or is on their way out. Joe, however, lost track of time before the sun went down and still has his sleeves shoved up and papers scattered hither and yon across his desk. He even pulled out his glasses from the back of his drawer. He's pretty sure he needs a new prescription.

It takes him a long moment to drag his eyes from the computer screen to Patrick's face.

"You know, the Smith show won't open until December," Patrick says gently. "If you use up all your creative energy now, you'll run out in the homestretch."

"Yeah, I know." Joe smiles crookedly and runs a hand through his hair. His mother says he needs to get it cut, but he's gotten fond of the unruly look in the time it's taken to grow it out. "I'm trying to run through all the panic, you know? Get that shit out of the way."

Patrick knocks his knuckles on the frame and smiles. "You'll be fine," he says over his shoulder. "Go home."

*

Joe grabs Thai takeout from a little hole in the wall place between his subway stop and his apartment. The box steams in the orange glow of the sodium lamps, but it keeps his hands warm.

His place is on top of a pizza parlor owned by a guy actually named Vinny with a big gut that hangs over his apron and a deep, booming laugh that bounces off the walls and fills up a room. He's rolling out dough when Joe walks up. Vinny waves, leaving a little poof of dust hanging in the air and Joe nods in return.

In the grand scheme of apartments, especially considering what he pays for rent, Joe's place ranks on the nicer side of the scale. He likes the scarred wooden floors and the bizarre architectural quirks that come from it having been converted into a living space fifty years after the building went up.

He drops his keys and bag on the squat table by the door, the one he inherited from his Aunt Millie and eats his food on the couch, watching some Discovery Channel documentary about glow-in-the-dark fish.

It's late by the time he finishes eating his curry. Outside his window, the city glows with bright pinpricks of light in white and red and orange. He can't afford a place downtown, but he's close enough to hear the gentle throb of it's heartbeat.

*

Joe spends two restless hours laying in bed. He listens with half an ear to the progression of TV fare from prime time dramas to the news to late night talk shows. When the opening monologue of the late, late show picks up, he throws back the blankets with an annoyed sigh.

There's a weird, misplaced little window snugged along the baseboards beside his bed. Joe doesn't honestly know what the hell made anyone think that was a good place for a window, but it's there nonetheless and it's become one of his favorite spots. Yawning and scrubbing a hand through his hair, he slides down onto the small pile of pillows he keeps nudged up against the wall and reaches for his sketchbook.

At about a month old, it's still on the new side. It doesn't have the weathered look that comes from filling up the pages and carrying it around every day for six months.

There are a couple pages of unfinished, crisp, clean tattoo designs he flips past. Half of them already have the color added and a smattering are partially filled in. He's not doing the work for anyone, just his own personal gratification. There's no rush.

He finds the next clean page and smooths his palm over it. The paper is solid and cool, a nice heavy weight that won't let anything bleed through.

Joe doesn't really believe any of that stuff about artists not creating anything, but rather allowing an already existing work to be expressed through the divine medium of their hands. Or someshit.

He believes in the weird moment after he's finished, when he blinks and thinks, hey, I did that.

*

In the morning, Joe checks his email while coffee brews and there's one from Patrick, this time from his official Schiff Gallery account. It has a list of phone numbers, fax numbers, email addresses, and regular addresses.

These are all the places you can contact Smith.

As a point of interest, Joe doesn't throw up in his mouth at the prospect of talking to an artist hip enough to have entered the pop culture lexicon. But, as a point of honesty, it's a near thing.

*

Joe and Pete spend most of the morning making faces at each other from across the gallery, while Ashlee smiles politely at the visitors and makes clear her desire to kill them both through the judicious application of hand gestures. She sells a small statue to an older couple who frequent Schiff; it's made of paper clips, with pipe bones and Joe'll be sad to see it go.

"You guys are the single reason we're still a small gallery," she gripes, unweaving one of her braids. Pete bats his eyelashes in that singularly creepy way he has, and sidles up, setting his head on her shoulder.

"But you love us, right?" he asks. "Ash, Ashlee. We're fucking awesome."

Biting back a smile that manages to reach into her eyes anyway, Ashlee elbows him with all the strength of her tiny frame. "You're fucking something. Go do work. Go do something! Get out of my hair, or I'm going to tell Patrick you're lazy and should be fired."

Pete makes a sound of shock and horror and throws his arms around Ashlee's waist. Joe's pretty sure that if they don't fuck or go on a date soon, the entire gallery is going to fucking combust from the sheer force of their mutual crushes. "Patrick would never do that."

Serendipitously, Patrick chooses that moment to come out of his office, carrying a stack of glossy photographs and wearing his glasses. "I'd never do what?"

"Fire us," Joe chimes in.

"You'd like to think that," Patrick shoots back and ignores Pete falling to the ground in ecstasies of wounded friendship. Ash bites back giggles, hiding her mouth behind her hand and chewing visibly on the inside of her cheek. "Also," Patrick continues, "Smith's people contacted me and he wants to swing by the gallery tomorrow and start hammering out details. I told him noon."

Joe swallows and nods.

Pete picks himself up off the floor and claps a hand on Joe's shoulder. "Fuck yeah, dude. You'll be great."

*

As Joe's leaving the gallery, he somehow gets corralled into going out for drinks with Pete and Ash and Ash's cute roommate, Brendon. He had been making plans to spend the rest of the evening looking up more shit about Spencer Smith to prepare for the looming meeting, but drinking seems both more fun and less stalkery.

They end up at some arty hipster dive bar place their friend Nick owns, called the Grilled Cheese, for no logical reason Joe has ever been able to figure out.

It's artistically dark and really, really trying to be seedy. But it's all just a little too carefully arranged to really work. It feels like a set, more than anything. It's not a place the wounded souls of the world go when their deepest dreams have died. It's more a place twenty somethings having bad days go to get wasted and pretend they understand artistic suffering. All the glamor and none of the impetus to cut your ear off or drink bleach.

"Here's to Joe," Pete says, raising his shot glass. They're all a little blurry around the edges. Pete has his other hand on the small of Ashlee's back, resting tentatively on the bit of skin peeking through between her pants and shirt. Brendon's giving a little guy with dark bangs swooping across his face come-hither eyes from across the room. "Here's to his first show, that he's going to knock out of the motherfucking park."

Brendon whoops and Ashlee catcalls; they clink their glasses together and drink.

*

Half the pictures and self-portraits of Spencer Smith show a pretty little teenager with cocked hips and a self conscious inward turn to his body. The other half show a guy easily four inches taller and filled out, with differing facial hair and a new and improved ease. Joe's met a lot of I-don't-give-a-shit artist types in his day, but this guy comes really close to taking the cake.

The guy who shows up at the Schiff Gallery at precisely eleven fifty-five is almost exactly the same height as Joe, with hair tucked behind his ears, a beard, and sunglasses. He's wearing jeans that cling tight to his hips, a shirt that does the same to his belly, and a leather jacket.

Joe feels like he's ten years old again, and trying to work up the courage to talk to one of the cool high school kids.

"Hi?" he manages to say.

"I don't really have a lot of time," Spencer Smith says, pushing his sunglasses up on his nose. "So let's make this fast."

*

Smith brought a folder with snapshots of his latest work instead of actual prints; they're blurry and indistinct, which Joe suspects is because someone other than Smith took them. Most people who deal in five thousand dollar cameras on a regular basis are also capable of working a cheapo digital.

Joe really wants to take his time flipping through them. Since he can't see the actual prints he wants to take his damned sweet time examining the grainy pixels. This brand new series of work is a small, but marked step in a different direction that Joe has trouble putting words to in his own head. It's still lots of skin and lots of defiant pictures of junk, but.

"These are good," Joe offers. Once they got to his office, somehow he ended up sitting while Smith leans against the edge of the desk with his arms crossed over his chest. He's kept his dumb sunglasses on and the rest of his face is impassive behind them.

He waves away the compliment with his mouth drawn into a tight line. "Yeah. As for the show, I don't want anything too over the top in presentation. They can speak for themselves, so I think it's best to let them do so."

Joe nods and cycles back around to the first picture. He hands them to Smith, who sets them in a neat pile on Joe's desk. Then, suddenly, he's back on his feet and fishing for his keys. "Okay, so. I'll contact you sometime late this week."

Then he's gone.

*

"So."

Joe doesn't look up from his laptop screen. He knows Pete's voice when he hears it, and he knows the rustle of Ashlee standing behind Pete's shoulder. He's only surprised they managed to wait a whole fifteen minutes to come investigating.

"So what?" Joe asks, clacking away. He's three paragraphs into an email to Andy, his old college roommate who decided three months before graduation to fuck modern society et al and go live in the wilds of Wisconsin with a harem of anarchists. It...didn't really make sense at the time and, years later, it hasn't developed any sudden clarity. But anarchy, apparently, doesn't extend to iPhones and they still keep in touch.

Ash crosses his office and plops down, pulling her feet up under her butt and pushing Joe's laptop closed. "Seriously. What's this magical Spencer Smith like?"

Huffing out a sigh, Joe runs a hand through his hair and leans back in his chair. His office has big windows along two walls, letting in the gold tinged afternoon sunlight. There's a giant tree just outside and one of the branches taps lightly against the glass. Pete trails in after Ashlee and sits on the arm of the chair, probably mostly so he can bump their ankles together.

"I don't know?" Joe offers. "Kind of a douche, actually. He was here for maybe fifteen minutes and I got in ten whole words."

Pete snorts out a braying laugh and tips his head onto Ashlee's shoulder. "He's an artiste, dude, what did you expect?"

*

Joe cuts out an hour early (with permission from Patrick, because he's not a douche) with vague plans of going to the park or something and sitting on a bench with his sketchbook. People watching ranks among his slightly more creeper past times, but hey. The population of his city has a large proportion of interesting faces.

As soon as he steps outside, though, he just isn't feeling it. The air is cold with coming winter and he's still residually annoyed from the meeting with Smith. The feeling clings noxiously to his skin. Instead, takes the subway home and walks the couple blocks from the station to his apartment with his feet dragging on the cracked cement.

A storm's coming in with iron colored clouds taking bites from the blue sky.

It's so dumb and like a scene out of a Hallmark movie and Joe just kind of wants to drink a lot of beer and listen to hardcore turned up obnoxiously loud until he's got the pretentious disdain blasted off his skin. And psyche.

In his apartment, he does in fact turn up the hardcore loud and he does in fact grab a beer. He also hauls out a half-finished canvas, a pair of scissors, a bottle of glue, and all the issues of Rolling Stone he's never going to want to read again.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he starts hacking away, mouthing along to the music as he goes. Faces get cut in half, he excises album covers he loves and hates and for albums that he hasn't listened to in four years, if ever. A pair of legs here from a photo shoot of a one hit wonder that accidentally forgot to become the promised next big thing; particularly interesting typography is carefully pulled away.

(Joe always has a moment, when he does the collage bit, of flashing back to kindergarten. It makes him smile.)

For the better part of two hours, he pairs up his cut out pieces and makes humans that are way fucking cooler than anyone he's ever seen. One skinny blond model's leg hooks up with that of a tattooed dude and they share a torso of a dinosaur advertising sneakers, with waving octopus tentacles for arms and George Washington's head on top. That one moshes with a dozen like it at a show where the band isn't even mostly human.

Two am rolls around and Joe finishes his second beer and sits back on his heels. The canvas suddenly isn't half finished, but done, and smiles to himself as he stumbles back to his bedroom and passes out.

*

Patrick says, "The thing about this job is that sometimes you'll have to work with - how do I say?"

"Epic fucking douchenozzles?" Joe suggests with a smirk.

Spencer Smith's people called Wednesday morning and arranged (Joe would have phrased it with "demanded," but he's learning to be diplomatic. To a point.) a meeting for Friday evening. A full hour after Joe's supposed to be done. But it's cool, it's cool. Joe can deal.

"True enough," Patrick chuckles. "Remember, we don't have a job without them."

*

Thursday night, Joe goes drinking with Brendon and Ashlee and Pete again, at a little bar a couple blocks down. It's shoved between a corner deli and a steakhouse. He hauls out the snapshots of Smith's latest work and passes them around the table. For ten minutes he sips at a beer and alternates between watching whatever game is on and examining their expressions.

"Well," Ash says eventually. "They're good."

"He doesn't take bad pictures," Joe notes, draining the last of his beer and clunking the bottle down. "Which is the worst part of it. I wish they were crap."

Pete gathers the Polaroids up and shoves them across the sticky table. "I still say suck it up, dude. When you pull this off, and I do mean when, people are gonna flock to Schiff like flies to fucking garbage and they'll all be calling your name."

Joe rolls his eyes and signals for another drink. "What do you think?" he asks Brendon.

Thoughtfully, Brendon knocks back the dredges of the fruit infused umbrella drink he ordered. "I think I am a pretty gay dude and any picture of a naked dick stands a good chance of working really well for me."

They all burst into laughter and Brendon bows and bows again. Which, yeah. Joe feels marginally better.

*

When they close the doors to the public, the gallery goes quiet. An hour later it goes dark when the last straggling employees pull on their coats, make their way out, and turn off the lights.

Joe shuts down his computer and pulls out his sketchbook, curling and uncurling his hand into a fist to loosen up the muscles. He keeps a couple charcoal pencils in the back of his top drawer, with a gummy eraser and a short ruler for straight lines.

Frowning, irritated that he's sitting in his office and not on the subway or with friends, he starts sketching out the rough, blocky outline of a robot clutching its chest and staring into the distance with betrayed eyes. In Joe's head, the robot just found out his creator never gave him a heart and he's now questioning everything he ever felt.

Or something like that. Joe just really likes robots.

He's adding some small details, rivets and rust, when a short knock sounds on the frame of his door. A preemptive glance at his clock shows, hey, Smith's only twenty minutes late.

"I finalized the pieces," Smith says. He lays a single typed sheet of paper on Joe's desk. "Look it over and I'll contact you later."

And then, lo, the fucker is gone and Joe hurls a package of post-it notes across the room.

*

"The solution," Pete declares, "Is for you to release your own shit and become the world famous, douchebag artist."

Joe throws him a look.

*

Smith's people call again on Monday and Joe almost doesn't answer the phones, except he genuinely likes his job ninety-five percent of the time. "Mr. Smith wants to know if it would be possible to have you meet him at his studio?"

Joe yanks his drawer open and fumbles for the official Schiff Gallery stress ball Patrick got them all last holiday season. "Sure," Joe says through gritted teeth, strangling the innocent sphere of rubber.

The voice on the other end of the phone rattles off an address in one of the ungentrified, but still too cool for mere mortal peons neighborhoods of the city. It's easily half an hour away, assuming the subway isn't being a contentious fucker.

"Where are you going?" Patrick asks quizzically as Joe's on his way out.

"To fucking pay homage," Joe gripes.

*

Smith's loft is a third story walk up in what looks like a converted warehouse. The brick side bears the faint memory of old, hand-painted signs from a hundred years ago and there's a musician on the corner, playing jazzy trumpet to the clear October sky. Joe tosses a five into his case.

The walls of the stairwell are covered in graffiti, but it's careful to be art and not just vandalism. Joe can't tell if it's an accurate history of the people who once lived, laughed, loved, and all that within the walls or just a facade to give the place some authenticity. It's cool though; he hopes it's real.

Smith's door is made of exposed metal on a sliding track. The distant thud of a bass escapes through the rivets and cracks.

Joe defiantly doesn't knock. He slides the door open and steps into soaring ceilings and exposed brick walls and Spencer fucking Smith shirtless and crouched down in front of a naked black dude covered in tattoos.

Joe blushes. A little. Until he heard the click of a shutter, it sort of, kind of, a little bit looked like Smith was giving the guy head.

The tattooed dude is half hard and relaxed, sprawled in a battered armchair with the tips of his fingers brushing against the curly thatch of pubic hair at the base of his dick.

"Five minutes," Smith says without turning around.

*

Eight minutes later, according to Joe's watch that syncs to atomic time, the tattooed dude has come across his belly while Smith steadily clicks away. Smith tosses him a towel over his shoulder as he sets his camera down on a table off the side.

"Enjoy the show?" he asks around a grin that's barely there.

Joe opens his mouth, closes it, and ignores the tattooed dude laughing to himself as he shimmies into his boxers and jeans.

"I was summoned," Joe says, folding his arms over his chest.

Smith hooks his thumbs in his belt loops and smiles again, wryly. "I'm aware. I thought you might want to see the pieces in person before they show up on Schiff's doorstep in whatever sizes I choose."

Tattooed guy, now dressed in jeans and a half zipped hoodie, touches Smith on the shoulder. "I'm out. Call me later, yeah?" He casts a look toward Joe, eyes crinkled at the corner in a smile. "Have fun, dude, and don't be nervous. Spencer here is really good."

Completely accidentally Joe makes a shocked noise and tattooed guy laughs his way out of the studio.

"That's Travis," Spencer says after a beat. "He's great."

*

Smith has the raw prints hanging on clotheslines strung across the far end of the room on identical wooden pins. They flutter very gently in an almost non-existant breeze. They kind of remind Joe of month wings just before they land.

"My thought was to enlarge some of them," Smith says over his shoulder. He pulled on a black shirt and it stretches tight across his shoulder blades. He goes carefully along the line, pulling down roughly a dozen prints. "Arrange the smaller ones around the larger with a thematic connection or whatthefuckever."

The floor is spattered with faded paint in a thousand different colors. Idly, Joe wonders if Spencer dabbles in other art, but he shakes his head to clear the thought away. Fucking Smith is a photographer, mere mortal facsimiles are probably beneath him.

"Are you going to come look at these?"

Joe scuttles over and nearly trips over his own feet doing it.

"That's Travis," Smith says, tapping the bottom corner of a print; it's a hand splayed over a pelvis that cuts off just at the dark hint of pubic hair. He pulls over a print of a girl laughing with her bottom lip caught between her teeth and one breast cupped in her hand. "And this is another friend of mine."

Joe smoothes his finger over their glossy surfaces. Honest-to-fuck, they should be nothing more than porn with great production values, but they're not. Maybe it's just the lighting and expensive camera, but the girl doesn't look like she's trying to seduce you through the lens. She's grinning like the photographer is someone she loves.

"These are good," Joe says. "Even better in person."

Smith leans forward on his elbows and offers a half grin caught between smirking and embarrassed. "Anyway."

"Do you have more of each of the models?" Joe asks. "You could arrange them as character studies."

With brightly colored fall leaves whirling past the long windows that dominate the far wall, Smith's blue eyes light up and he goes back to the clothesline, quickly pulling down more and more prints.

*

"I think this is good," Smith says eventually, drawing out the words like he doesn't really want to let them fall. "Do you think they're good?"

Joe surveys the pictures arrayed before him for the hundred thousandth time and smiles. "Yeah, dude, seriously. They're great."

Smith nods, mostly to himself. "Yeah. Okay. Okay."

*

Sunday afternoon, Joe meets Pete and his ex-boyfriend slash current roommate Jon for coffee at the tiny shop Jon owns, a method of combating the proliferation of Starbucks locations across the city and, to a larger extent, the world.

"And then the naked guy, Travis, told me to have fun and not to worry, because Smith is a great photographer," Joe concludes.

Jon and Pete both burst into laughter, nearly slopping hot drinks over the rims of their mismatched mugs. Pete's braying donkey laugh has a couple heads turning from other tables with quizzical smiles and Jon's business partner behind the counter, Tom, shaking his head.

"Shit, Joe," Jon chimes in, "If I'd known you were up for that, I'd have made an offer."

The walls of Jon's coffee shop, Walker's, are covered in a metric ton of bric-a-brac and memorabilia, including Jon's own photographs and snapshots of friends and repeat customers.

Joe casually flips Jon off. "He showed me his shit, too, and he's really goddamn good at what he does."

"Was he still a douche?" Pete leans forward on his elbow, one eyebrow raised. "Did you punch a dude into submission?"

"No," Joe snorts. "He was fine."

*

The new voices or new perspectives or whatever it's called show closes the week of Halloween, which makes room for some guy who does LSD tripping oil canvases in psychedelic shades of neon. They have enough symbolism to choke a goat, but they're cool nonetheless.

Night before the show opens, Joe and Patrick smoke a joint in Patrick's private bathroom and wander their way through the paintings, giggling.

*

Joe spends a week drawing people at one in the morning by the light of the TV and the city coming in through his window. He draws hands laced together with bitten fingernails and ragged cuticles. He draws the curve of a hip with a faded, drunk tattoo peeking around the edges. He draws eyes lidded with sleep and happiness.

He feels kind of like an idiot while he does it, but whatever.

*

The tree outside Joe's window is naked, stripped bare of all leaves as November settles heavy and thin around them. He's trying to compose an email to a very, very nervous and unsure young sculptress who is very worried about her upcoming showing in January. She's talented as hell, just badly infected with the jitters and with a propensity for rambling.

He's trying to decide if there's a legitimate problem hiding in the paragraphs or just butterflies in her stomach expressed with literary abandon when a knock at his door sends his eyes skittering off the screen.

The one and only Spencer Smith stands in his doorway in black skinny jeans, a button down, and a blazer with his big sunglasses pushed up into his hair and a camera bag slung over his shoulder. "I'm doing a shoot. Come with me."

Joe stares. "I do have a job, you know."

Smith arches an eyebrow. "I'm the biggest show you'll have all year and everyone knows I'm temperamental, yeah? Anything to keep me happy should be the order. Now come on."

It's not like Joe can argue with that, so he shuts down his laptop, snags his bag, and red-facedly ducks into Patrick's office to mumble out an explanation on his way out the door.

*

"You know," Joe says as they walk, "I thought you didn't like me the first time I saw you."

"Maybe," Smith says, "I didn't."

*

They go to an apartment building tucked incongruously in the depths of the city, then up four fricking flights of stairs winding around a broken elevator to the top floor loft. It's a single huge room with stained glass windows and a beautifully scarred hardwood floor.

"Lesbians!" Smith calls, dropping his camera bag to the floor and shrugging off his blazer. He kneels, fiddling with the zippers.

Joe awkwardly jams his hands into his pockets and glances around, noting the mismatched furniture and the tinted light. In one corner there's a long table neatly draped in a dozen different fabrics with a mannequin standing guard. Midway along the wall is a desk with an open laptop and piles of books. A gray cat snoozes on top of the printer.

From behind a screened off area in the far corner comes a woman in black sweats and a tee shirt with dark bangs slanting across her eyes. She languidly saunters out and plants her hands on her hips, smiling. "Hey, Spence. Is this the gallery guy?"

"Yep," Smith says, snapping a picture from the low angle and straightening. "He's acting as my assistant. Where's your wife?"

"Here." Another woman in cut off plaid pajama pants and a stretched out tank top appears, tipping her fingers in a wave. "I'm Leighton," she says. "This is Vicky."

*

"Move the couch up," Smith says while the two are disrobing behind the screen. Joe doesn't know why he expected his presence to urge Smith toward a higher degree of modesty.

Joe blinks at the request. "Do what?"

"I don't have my lights," Smith says slowly, like he's talking to a five year old. A stupid five year old. "I have to take advantage of the ambient natural light or there's no point in taking any shots at all."

"You're an ass," Joe says, bracing his shoulder against the back of Vicky and Leighton's couch and shoving it a few inches forward. "Seriously."

"I'm the talent," Spencer says and, though he doesn't even look up from his camera, Joe catches the barest hint of a smile.

*

It turns out, Leighton is a clothing designer. Vicky is a columnist.

Spencer takes pictures of them naked and lazily entwined on their couch so it's hard to tell which limbs belong to who. Joe sits on their chair and carries on a conversation that grows steadily less stilted as time goes on. After an hour he barely even noticed their nipples. Spencer's in a zone, he doesn't say anything.

"You should join us," Leighton teases as the light starts to fade.

Vicky and Joe both snort. "No thanks," Joe says, "I promised my mama I would always keep my clothes on."

"That's what everyone says," Spencer mumbles.

*

It's dark by the time they head down the stairs and spill out into the cold night. Joe humps up his shoulders and hides his face in the upturned collar of his jacket, pushing his hands deep into his pockets. The strap of Smith's camera bag cuts diagonally across his chest and he hooks his fingers on it.

"Come get a drink with me," Smith says. It's not really an invitation, but it's not a command either. Mostly it's like a statement of fact. Joe opens his mouth and closes it again, then checks his watch. He technically finished work an hour before and he trusts Pete and Ash to have handled anything that might have come up.

"I thought you didn't like me," he says instead.

Spencer looks at him for a long, protracted moment, then rolls his shoulders in a shrug. "I said I might not have liked you the first time I met you. Come get a drink with me."

Something in the back of Joe's mind dances around the road to hell being paved with good intentions and poorly thought out drinks, but hey. It's been awhile since Joe last got a drink with someone who wasn't from work and wasn't trying to get into Ashlee's pants by playing footsie with her underneath the table.

"Yeah," Joe says, "Why not?"

*

"I would not have expected you to drink at a tavern," Joe says. "Dude, I'm impressed."

Smith snorts and shoves a beer across the scarred bar top. Joe missed the name of the place, but he can guess it's something like O'Hoolihans or McGillivray's; it looks like a rejected set from some gritty cop drama. It's actually a nice change from the too cool for school hipster joints Joe usually drinks at.

"My dad believed in the good, old fashioned tavern," Spencer says with a shrug. "Anything flashier and it was too much like a fucking casino."

"Right, you're from Vegas."

"Born and raised," Smith says, lifting his mug. They clink their rims together and snort in tandem. There's something sort of inherently funny about sitting on bar stools with their feet dangling in their air like little kids.

Joe drains half and lets out a long, satisfied breath. "So, fearless leader. You excited for the show?"

A quick succession of emotions spasm across Spencer's face, ranging from a hint of elation to the look right before you upchuck everything in your stomach. He settles on cool indifference and shrugs again. "I've opened shows before. It's all about the same."

He is so full of shit, Joe decides, but it's getting steadily less and less annoying.

*

Pete stares at Joe from across his desk.

"So what, you're replacing me as number one drinking buddy with the big shot photog? That's low, dude. That's low. He's like a glorified papparazzi."

Joe blows out an annoyed noise and thwaps Pete on the nose with a roll of papers that should have been filed somewhere, but weren't. "I dare you to say that to his face. No, really, dude. I dare you."

Pete mumbles something unintelligible and Joe snorts out a laugh.

*

Somewhere between trying not to freak out about the Smith show and trying not to think about Smith and the many ways he's completely bizarre, Joe finds some time to amp up his music and make his own shit.

He hasn't done this much work since he was in college and didn't have anything else to do. It's kind of righteous.

*

When Smith appears again in Joe's door, wearing his casual pose and camera bag, Joe doesn't stop typing. "I really, honestly do have a job. A job that involves your livelihood. And even if you don't care about my job, you have to give a shit about yours."

"Do I really need to repeat the whole bit about me being a big deal?" Smith asks with a raised eyebrow. "Because I can and the end result will be the same. It's just faster if you come with me now."

Shaking his head, Joe closes his laptop and leans forward on his elbows, fixing Smith with the most pointed look he has. "Flattered though I am that you want me around, dude, I'm aware that photography isn't my strong suit. I'm not really that helpful."

Spencer shrugs and the mood shifts just a little bit. "The art world is full of jackasses and blowhards. You're neither. Now fucking come with me, please."

*

This time they're back at Smith's studio, now with more and fancier lighting and an infinitely more lived in look. Travis is already there waiting, along with another tall, skinny guy with brown hair curling around his chin. They're sitting on the table in their boxers, thumb wrestling.

"You know Travis," Spencer says, "That's William. He's also great."

Spencer spends fifteen minutes fucking around with the light and his camera, pulling faces at the white backdrop and minutely adjusting the bulbs. Joe sheds his jacket and wanders over to Travis and William, admiring Travis's tattoos from the closer angle.

"So," Joe says, tapping his thumbs on his hips. "How do you know Spencer?"

William smiles and ducks his head. "Friend of a friend. I was in Vegas for awhile and I needed the cash. He needed the naked body."

Joe joins William and Travis in a laugh. "What about you?" he asks Travis.

Travis laces his fingers together and extends his arms out in front of his chest, then raises them over his head. Joe's not entirely sure whether it's meant to just show off his body or not; the view is appreciated either way. "We were in school together," Travis says. "I took some art classes for shits and giggles and ran into him. I guess he liked my look."

"I love your look," Spencer says, coming up behind Joe and making him jump. "Now, if you two would get naked, that'd be great."

*

Again, it's dark when they're done.

Again, Smith says, "Come get a drink with me."

Oddly, it's way easier for Joe to say yes the second time around.

*

Standing in Smith's living room, Joe figures he probably should have clarified where they were going before he said yes.

"If you're going to stay," Smith says from behind the kitchen counter, "you can take off your jacket. It's not that cold."

A part of Joe insists that he has to be imagining the teasing, because this is Spencer fucking Smith and he's a serious artiste. But the smile on Spencer's mouth isn't imaginary. Ruling out hallucinations, it has to be real, so Joe unzips his jacket and lays it neatly over the back of a chair.

Smith's place is decently sized and has a new feel to it. Which makes sense, since he hasn't been in the city very long. Joe can see a couple folded cardboard boxes peeking out of the closet and the furniture smells new. It's nice, though, sort of thrift store chic. The couch has wooden legs and weathered upholstery and the walls are covered in old posters and photographs. Nothing matches, exactly, but it all fits.

Joe hadn't put a great deal of thought into what a world famous photographer's living room would look like, but he'd have imagined more steel and white leather.

"Here." Smith hands Joe a glass of red wine.

"Classy," Joe comments before he can stop himself and he's surprised at Spencer's laugh.

"When I was first starting to show my stuff," Smith says around a soft smile. "I wasn't even eighteen yet, but they'd have champagne and all that at the parties and shit. My mom used to make them get a bottle of sparkling whatever juice so I had something to drink."

Joe laughs.

*

"You don't have to call me Smith. You can call me Spencer," he says after two glasses.

*

Somehow an hour passes. Then two, then three, and then it's a little after two thirty in the morning and Joe's sprawled loosely on Spencer's couch with contentment buzzing pleasantly in his veins.

Spencer's eyes are warm and just a little bit glassy around the edges. Joe's not sure how much they've drunk, but he does know beyond any shadow of doubt that he's had red wine, white wine, something mixed and burning, and now they're both nursing beers that feel way more familiar in Joe's hand.

"So," Spencer says, "Are you also an artist or are you just an appreciator?"

"Not professionally," Joe says, finishing his Coors. "On my own time, though. Mixed media collage stuff. I sketch, but who doesn't?"

Spencer snorts and closes his eyes. "Me. I started taking pictures because I couldn't draw for shit and I wanted to take art classes with my best friend in high school."

There's only the light from the kitchen illuminating the room and it's pleasantly dim. Mood lighting, almost. "Is he an artist?"

"No. He's a novelist."

There's a beat of silence and then they both burst out laughing. Joe plunks his bottle down on the coffee table and leans forward, heavily resting his weight on his knees. Spencer has the fingers of one hand poked through the spaces between the buttons of his shirt. He's oddly beautiful. "You're gay," Joe says.

Opening one eye, Spencer gives him an arch, blurry look. "I am. Are you?"

"Sort of, yeah," Joe replies.

That moment pretty much decides the rest of it.

*

The clock beside the bed says it's three fifteen, and Joe's never yet known a clock to deliberately lie to him, so he trusts that.

Joe is on his back with his knees up around his ears, which is funny and awkward at the same time, because he stopped doing the horizontal tango like this way back when. He's a creative dude, he can do better. Even so, Joe's on his back and Spencer's slowly pushing in.

Spencer smells spicy, like good cologne, and the skin Joe can get at with his tongue tastes like salt. He's making soft little noises in the back of his throat and he keeps his hands braced with the blankets curled in his fists. He doesn't talk, but somehow that's not really surprising.

This, Joe thinks, is probably way, way, way up there in the ranks of bad ideas. Truthfully? He doesn't really care.

*

In the morning, Spencer's arm is slung loosely across Joe's stomach and his head hurts.

*

The thing is, Joe is not That Guy.

He doesn't take off at six in the morning with sleep crusted in his eyes and beer and sweat clinging to his skin and regret pounding along with the headache caught between his temples and the clench of his stomach. He doesn't leave people to wake up alone, even if hooking up was a bad idea to begin with.

No, he makes coffee and pancakes and smiles first so the other person can breathe in and out and know that there's nothing wrong. Joe is a good guy, even when he's making mistakes, and that's worked really well for him since he started having sex when he was nineteen.

There's something deeply and infinitely sketchy about sitting in Jon's coffee shop half an hour before it's actually supposed to open, wearing yesterday's clothes and the scent of another person in his hair. Jon, because he is a good human being, hands him black coffee and lets Joe sit while Jon tidies up and fills the front case with scones and cookies and shit.

"I'm assuming it's more a worst night ever than a best night ever," Jon says eventually, mouth pulled into a sympathetic frown.

Joe fucked Spencer Smith, which goes above and beyond the usual strictures of a bad hook up. He scrubs a hand through his hair and drains the rest of his mug. "Can I use your shower?" he asks.

*

Pete and Ashlee notice, and Patrick. Fuck, probably everyone notices, because Joe's celibacy has been a running a joke for the better park of six months and there's only so much a two minute cold shower can accomplish.

"If it was an orgy," Patrick says, "I don't want to know."

Patrick knowing is sort of another ballpark altogether and Joe tastes acid and coffee and come in the back of his throat. "We're fine," Joe says, swallowing. "It's fine."

*

If Joe were eighteen, he muses, he would probably be patting himself on the back for boning someone famous and calling up his buddies for some celebratory drinks. Closer to thirty than he's really comfortable with, he just sort of feels like he made a dumb mistake on more levels than he can wrap his brain around.

Smith. Spencer Smith. Spencer fucking Smith.

The show opens in two weeks, which is a nice little balancing number when Joe counts and realizes it's been two weeks since that night and he's yet to hear an actual word from Spencer's mouth himself. They're back to communication through Spencer's people and the digital remove of email.

Granted, the close they get to opening, the more frequent and frantic the emails get. But, despite Joe's repeated offers of a phone call or visit to expedite the process, his cell doesn't ring.

He spends six hours working in the gallery, hanging Smith's pieces and carefully tweaking and perfecting the lighting.

It's all about people and the pictures Spencer could take of them in two minutes or half an hour. Joe spends a lot of time with at the ones of Vicky, capturing her shedding a sun dress and spinning around and the ones of Travis, easily letting his hands roam over his own skin.

*

With every voicemail Joe leaves, he rationalizes it as needing to contact the artist. It's not desperate if it's professional.

*

"You need some fun," Pete insists. "The show opens tomorrow and you'll be busy. Come on, come drink with me and Ash and Brendon. Hell, I can call Jon and he'll bring his dudes. It'll be great."

Joe shrugs. "No thanks. I'm going to go home and draw or something."

Pete pulls a face, but it's a fleeting thing. Ashlee's hanging on his elbow instead of it being the other way around. Their bodies are cocked in toward each other and Joe manages a smile at that. It figures now Pete would grow the balls to tell Ash he wants to carry her children.

"If you change your mind," Ash says.

"Don't make Brendon feel like too much of a third wheel," Joe says.

*

It's a beer and Chinese take out night, sitting on the couch with the Discovery Channel playing a marathon. In a weird way, it's like being back in college again, except he can't hear anyone fucking in the bedroom and he doesn't have the plastic cups to play beer pong.

He's got his canvases spread out around the room, leaning against the coffee table and the entertainment center. None of them look finished, even the ones that he signed and completed two and thee years before. A real artist would turn off the TV and get his ass to work, adjusting and adding and creating or someshit until it all managed to work itself out.

Joe, however, is not a real artist and has never pretended to be.

He finishes his beer and sets it in the empty rice carton. It's not even midnight yet and he feels wrung out. Tomorrow, he'll have to spend the day putting the million finishing touches on Spencer Smith: Characters and the night wearing a suit and tie and schmoozing with the critics and buyers.

That's almost an art form in and of itself.

He'll have to see Spencer, too, and if he's lucky, they'll be able to mostly avoid each other. Spencer can do whatever Spencer does and Joe can deal with the caterers and the Schiff set. It'll be great.

Someone knocks on the door.

Joe assumes Pete when he lurches to his feet, scrubbing the heel of his hand against his eyes. He's wearing sweats and a tee shirt with a hole in the armpit when he opens the door; it takes him a couple blinks to realize it's really not Pete.

"So," Spencer says, voice tight. "I don't really dig waking up alone."

*

So, they're sitting on the couch. They're sitting on opposite ends of the couch with a buffer between them of thick, uncomfortable space. Spencer's wearing a damned suit and Joe's in his pajamas; Spencer is staring at Joe and Joe is looking anywhere but at Spencer.

"What did you think I was going to say?" Spencer asks. He sounds hurt, is the thing.

Joe sucks his bottom lip into his teeth. "I don't even know, Smith. We were drunk, it seemed like the thing to do."

"We weren't that drunk, asshole."

Joe snaps his gaze to Spencer. He's wearing sunglasses and that's cheating. Biting back an irrational surge of annoyance, Joe reaches and swipes the stupid ray-bans off. "You're inside at night, dude, you don't need these." He tosses them on the table. "And you're my boss, kind of. Sort of. It wasn't an okay thing to do."

"Oh, fuck me gently," Spencer snaps. "That's bullshit. At most, you work alongside me for the next month and half and then you never have to work with me again."

Spencer pushes himself up and starts to pace, tracing a circle around the coffee table. After two laps, he stops and picks up one of Joe's newer canvases. "Is this yours?"

"Yeah."

"It's good." Spencer sets it down and picks up another. "They're all good, why don't you show them?"

A very large part of Joe feels like he's in a play where he got the wrong script, because none of this is making any sense. "Because I don't want to, what the fuck does it matter?"

Spencer turns and looks at Joe with those stupid fucking blue eyes that burn out of every picture ever taken of him; Joe's spent an inordinate amount of time looking at them since Patrick made the announcement about Schiff's great catch. "So, you're afraid," Spencer says.

"Fuck you," Joe says, low.

Spencer reaches down and picks up his sunglasses. He slides them on and walks to the door. Over his shoulder, he says, "Find me when you're not," and then he's gone.

*

Joe doesn't sleep. He draws.

It's very tortured artist. He has a feeling, however things fall out, Pete'll be proud of that particular point.

*

Fear was never exactly the most cogent point. Fear was sort of this little niggling voice in the back of his brain saying that with as much as he knew about art, he damn well could compare his piddling shit to the stuff that he arranged and walked through every day. He could see the difference there, yes sir.

Light breaks over the jagged skyline of the city and Joe flexes his cramped fingers, staring out his window. Below his feet, he can hear the store waking up and the faint hum of traffic jumping to life ghosts up from the street. He looks down at the page of his sketchbook open on his knees and closes his eyes.

Whatever. He can do this.

*

Showered and shaved, gussied up and trying not to throw up Starbucks, Joe spends the entire day running around Schiff and not thinking about it.

He looks at the photographs, the really fucking beautiful photographs of people's parts broken down to highlight their wholes. Vicky's smile and her breasts and her hips, but mostly the way she holds herself with such self-consciously graceful certainty. Travis's ink and his eyes and fingers and especially the ease written in his long, lanky limbs, like he never doubts that he belongs where he is in the moment.

Between talking to the caterer and dealing with some small disaster of lighting, Patrick grabs his elbow. He's in a suit, topped with a fedora that has a jaunty feather sweeping back along the brim. "I just wanted to say, you did good." Patrick grins. "I never doubted you, but you did good."

Joe's caught between blushing and beaming, so he settles for ducking his head and sending up another silent prayer that he doesn't fuck everything up at the two yard line. "Thanks, dude."

Patrick bumps his fist to Joe's shoulder and they smile stupidly at each other, then dash in different directions.

*

Dark falls. Everything that's going to get done is done and Joe's wearing his best suit and tie, Pete's in whatever he passes off as dress clothes, and Ash is a vision in a little purple cocktail dress that makes her hair look like flames. "I'd almost go straight," Joe says a little fast and a little loud and she's kind and gracious enough to take the compliment with a pinch to his cheek and a slap to his ass.

The Schiff Gallery fills up quick with patrons and critics and the usual crowd expanded to an unusual degree. They're a respected and established gallery, yeah, but they're also on the small side and Spencer Smith is not known for doing small. Joe circles and circulates, doing the small talk number and graciously accepting a handful of compliments.

Spencer doesn't come. And doesn't show. And doesn't arrive.

An hour bleeds away in protracted increments and just about the point when Joe's heart is about to break through his ribs and make a run for it, a rapidly expanding murmur of voices reaches him in the back. He pushes through, because he knows the sound of an artist arriving.

Lo and behold, Spencer fucking Smith himself stands near the front with Patrick, wearing black pants and a button down with the collar open. He's got a blazer and a tight smile and, Joe's surprised to see, no fucking sunglasses indoors at night.

*

The dumb part is that Joe has this moment where his heart jumps and his lungs stop and his blood moves backwards. Because Spencer Smith is a douche, but he's also something else.

Fuck it all.

*

To his credit, Joe thinks, he makes it a whole thirty minutes before he can't take it anymore unless they want him to throw up all over the shoes of the Times' art critic. And she's a really nice lady with great shoes and doesn't deserve that.

He weaves his way through the crowd, sidestepping Pete whispering dirty shit in Ashlee's ear and trying to get her to blush and Brendon, looking moderately uncomfortable in a slightly too big suit while he talks to a guy with floppy hair and a doofy smile. Patrick tries to catch his eyes and Joe holds up his hands. Whether he's got this or not, nothing else can go any more spectacularly wrong.

He comes at Spencer from the side and lightly hooks his fingers on Spencer's elbow. "Could I speak to you for a moment. In my office."

Joe's throat is closing up and his stomach is sloshing and seriously, this kind of bodily response shit is not called for at all. Spencer looks at Joe from the corner of his eyes, then smiles politely at the woman he was talking to and says, "Excuse me for just one minute."

It's a small victory. Joe'll take it.

*

They don't talk while they walk, but they're close enough for their knuckles to brush.

*

"So," Joe says, closing the door of his office. The lights are off in the back and everything is dim. "You are a douche and an asshole and you don't know me."

Spencer leans against Joe's desk and blinks, looking at him with pointed coolness. "And?"

It's the calm that's so infuriating, the sense that Spencer has his shit together and your opinion of him isn't going to change his opinion of himself. And it's beautiful, too. Or something like that. Either way, it makes Joe's skin buzz from the inside and he doesn't know whether to be afraid of the sensation or to embrace it.

In lieu of either, he picks up the sketchbook he spent the night restlessly working over and tosses it to Spencer. "Take a look."

Cautiously, with a single frown line appearing between his eyebrows, Spencer flips open the cover.

He takes his time going over each page, looking at the messy sketches and the crossed out mishaps and all the fuck ups and mistakes and the good ones circled in different color pens. He brushes his fingertips over the lines and doesn't say anything while Joe tries to hold still.

At the last page, he draws in an audible breath.

"I'm not afraid," Joe says clearly.

Carefully, Spencer sets the sketchbook aside and looks at him. "For the record, you don't really know anything about me either."

They look at each other.

Joe wants a million irrational things. He wants to muss Spencer's hair and strip down and let Spencer takes pictures while Joe explains each and every one of his tattoos, why they're important and what they mean. He wants to run into the gallery and tell the people that Vicky has a wife named Leighton and she hates oranges, that Travis is a teacher and a really fucking good one at that.

Spencer pushes off the desk and holds out his hand. "I want to find out."

And then it's easy. Joe takes Spencer's hand. His palm is warm and this is still probably a bad idea, but the best kind of bad idea.

*

"For the record, you're a giant creeper," Joe says as they walk. "Who shows up at someone's apartment after one night? I could have had an appointment for all you knew."

"I," Spencer says, mouth hanging open. "You just left! That's not fair."

"Still," Joe says, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. "Giant fucking creeper, dude."


End file.
